Save The Planet, Drink Local....

One of the things that raises the eyebrows of those who come up here for the official 'tour', is that the beer is mostly water. Now admittedly some beers may appear to be more mostly water than most (and this includes a few micro's), but water is around 90% of your pint. This means that in terms of transport, moving beer around the country is much the same as hauling plain old water about - which is of course a stupid waste of resources. Something which no doubt many hardcore ecomentalists forget, whilst tucking into their six-bean casserole washed down with a bottled water from France....

The answer of course is to drink a locally brewed beer. Sadly it seems that this is lost on many of these ecomentalists, especially those who enjoy an ice cold lager - which will have been shipped half way across the UK, if not Europe, then to add to the problem, has been run through up to 3 seperate chillers, all of which of course consume a lot of energy, which will have come from coal or nuclear power because the local NIMBY's will have blocked the alternative energy sources ("Yes sir, we sell chilled lager, but only a windy day").

So to save the world, drink a locally brewed beer - ie within 20-30 miles - and suddenly, that car you drive isn't quite such a danger to the world. Mind you, that car will no doubt be banned soon by some other do-gooder who lives a world with 40 buses an hour within 100 yards of their front door, and trains that don't cost several hundred pounds per mile to travel on. And so therefore assumes that the rest of us do as well.

You'd think of course that this message about locally-brewed beers, and the high energy costs of super-chilled lagers, would have been picked up and heavily bleated-on about by any real ale promoting consumer group. But no. It seems not. Surprisingly, this is despite grass roots members of CAMRA developing just such a campaign. Steve Westby, all-round nice bloke from Nottingham CAMRA, and beer organiser of several festivals each year, came up with the idea of 'LocAle', a scheme to promote locally brewed beer. Nottingham CAMRA ran with the idea, and pushed it to other branches. It is now being picked up by other branches, but with seemingly very little interest/support from CAMRA itself beyond supplying Point Of Sale material and acknowledging it's existence as an idea (although Steve Westby did get a campaigning award, partly due to his LocAle idea). Of course cynics might suggest that LocAle is of little use to bigger brewers with a national/super-regional market, and that these are the very same breweries who spend a lot of money on sponsorship & advertising.

LocAle is though being embraced at CAMRA branch level, and to be fair, that is where the most effective campaigning is done, so look out for the name in your local pub - unless of course they don't stock local beer, in which case, why are you in there?